A full night’s sleep helps you remember what you learned

Published 6:00 pm, Sunday, February 21, 2016

For any student thinking of staying up all night on caffeine and pretzels to cram before an exam, a new study may cause you to reconsider—to at least sleep on it.

The study took 14 volunteers who were in their 20s and showed them, on two occasions, 20 photos of faces with matching names. One time they then asked the participants to match names and faces after a day of regular activity. The other time they made the same request after the subjects had slept for eight hours.

After sleeping the subjects recalled 12 percent more names than after a day of activity. Plus, the researchers noted that a night of rest increased the confidence of the participants in giving answers as well as their accuracy.

It didn’t seem to matter how deeply or how well the person slept—only how long.

There’s been other research on the effects of napping on memory, but this may be the first to check memory against overnight sleep.

This is a small sample on a narrow age group, so more study is warranted. But other studies have shown the memory benefits of sleep, so any time you need to study for a test as an adult or student, it’s probably wise to do your study during the day then get as close to eight hours sleep as possible before trying to recall that information.

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